There is no reason why any website shouldn’t have a web analytics tool installed – especially since a tool like Google Analytics is available free of charge. The data that it can provide is plentiful – almost exhaustive – and can give you amazing information such as visits, bounce rates and other metrics which can give you a good indication of what’s happening when users come to your site

But in looking at all this data, it is important to ask yourself –

What should I do in turning this data into something that will impact my business’ bottom line?

After all, what’s the point in spending valuable time looking at data if you’re not going to pull insights from it that’ll make a business impact (whether it be revenue, enquiries / leads generated – whatever your website goal is)

Below are some points to ensure that your data can indeed make a tangible, measureable impact:

Ensure what you’re measuring (and reporting on) on your website is closely aligned with business objectives – particularly if reporting to stakeholders. There no quicker way to lose buy-in if you analyse / report on metrics that stakeholders don’t care about

Set up conversion “goals” in your analytics platform – and monitor these closely. A conversion is an action you want a visitor on your website to undertake (to purchase a product, to download a PDF file etc.) so it makes sense that it’s of high priority focus when analysing your business performance. Secondary metrics that affect goals (such as visits, bounce rate etc.) can then be analysed to understand what is driving these goals.

The value in analytics is around the insights, not necessarily the data. And be sure not to confuse the two. Data is what your analytics tool gives you, insights is how you change that data that has context and meaning

Further to the above, ensure insights pulled are actionable – turning the data into insights then into something actionable is where the value is realised! A great insight that isn’t actionable will not contribute to the bottom line so is of little or no tangible value

Measure your marketing activity with an ROI (Return on Investment) metric if you’re not doing so already – and compare it across digital channels to identify where you can get the greatest returns. Marketing budgets are finite so make it work as hard as possible.

Become data driven in your decision making – gut feel can be somewhat subjective. Using objectivity found in data will solidify reasoning behind your choices and give you confidence when making decisions

Realise that data analytics platforms (such as Google Analytics) gives you quantitative data (‘What’) on how visitors are interacting on your site – but it doesn’t give you qualitative (‘Why’) data. To get a holistic understand, utilise heat map tools (such as Crazy Egg) to provide context into the data you’re getting

We’ve heard about ‘data’ and ‘big data’ being the next big thing – in a way, it’s already here – but realise that data is not valuable unless it’s turned into actionable insights. Turn this into a competitive advantage for your business and realise the true power of analytics.

It’s that time of year again… when the digital community are making predictions on the technologies
and tactics that will be HOT next year. While these predictions may or may not be realised, here are breakthroughs I believe New Zealand businesses should be making right now (and in 2015) to remain competitive, no matter what.

Digital transformation needs to be driven from the top. Digital expertise at C-Level and on company advisory boards is a must.

Online business must have a clear value proposition. We have too many ‘me too’ online businesses. Differentiate and stand for something. What is it that you do better than anybody else out there? Compete on more than just price.

The international threat to New Zealand eCommerce Retail is real. New Zealand retailers must recognise this and think bigger. As it has been said, sometimes the best defence is a good offence. Although based in NZ, businesses must take advantage of global marketplaces to drive growth.

A great customer database is a must. The more segmented and personalised the better. I am amazed at how many companies in NZ are still not sending relevant, customised communications by email. The technology exists to do so. Take advantage of it.

People with good digital expertise in NZ are scarce. Perhaps companies should focus on core business and outsource to ‘best of breed’ companies those things that can be outsourced. A good external partner can be significantly more valuable to driving growth than the wrong internal hire.

Recognize speed, agility and innovation are competitive weapons. The ability of a business to learn, adapt, test and optimize is a key determining factor on where they will be in the market 12 months from now.

Businesses must leverage technologies and automation where possible to gain efficiency and increase effectiveness. Often with our No.8 wire mentality, NZ business are slow to invest and just make do. Don’t let that thinking hurt your growth opportunities.

Companies must do a better job at listening to and learning from customers. Work to improve the customer experience across devices and channels. This should be ‘always on’, not a one-time event.

Live, breathe and understand your organization’s digital data. Become expert in finding insights in that data. But most importantly, act on that data and improve business and marketing performance.

Know why you are employing various digital tactics. Ask the ‘why?’. Focus on what will make the biggest difference. Don’t waste time on things that don’t matter.

Too often we busy ourselves with various digital marketing tactics when many of the larger questions remain unanswered. In 2015, lets do the basics right. Let’s lift our game and compete effectively online.

Find out which stores are taking the lead in the toy industry in organic search and how they’re doing it.

FIRST has investigated the organic search engine rankings for NZ consumer searches focused on buying toys online in New Zealand, utilising FIRST’s Ranking Based Reach (RBR) analysis framework. In addition, a consumer survey was carried out to discover where Kiwis go first to find new or used toys and what is most important for them when ordering toys online.

In this report we discovered

Toyworld is leading the RBR in organic desktop search, leaving Mighty Ape and Fishpond quite a bit behind. In mobile the picture seems quite similar, with a bigger change at Bebabo which wins six positions in mobile.

In general, search results are broadly dispersed among a wide range of competitors. In this competitive market, a few toy stores have recognized the urgency of ranking well in organic search, nevertheless there are still many companies which are not at all present within natural search.

We discovered that toy-related search terms show seasonal peaks in November and December. Therefore, optimising search strategies according to consumers seasonal search behaviour (and special occasions) is a key requirement to sell more.

In our survey we revealed that most people would search on Trade Me first to find toys online, followed by 26% of Kiwis who would directly go to the website of a known toy store. Moreover we discovered that the “Quality of the toy” was considered as the most important factor when ordering toys online.

A digital strategy that integrates both organic and paid search should be a key customer acquisition and revenue driver for toy stores.

FIRST uses its bespoke metric called RBR (Ranking Based Reach) to estimate how well each company is ranking in search engines. RBR provides a simple way to compare a website’s search engine rankings with its competitors. RBR is an estimate of the percentage of available search traffic a website will receive for a set of phrases – this gives the sites share of search or reach. It is weighted based on the popularity of each search phrase and the relative click through rate (CTR) of each ranking position.

Find out which providers are taking the lead in the gift industry in organic search and how they’re doing it.

FIRST has investigated the organic search engine rankings for NZ consumer searches focused on buying gifts online in New Zealand, utilising FIRST’s Ranking Based Reach (RBR) analysis framework. In addition, a consumer survey was carried out to discover for which occasion Kiwis ordered gifts online most frequently and for whom they would buy gifts mostly.

In this report we discovered:

New Zealand owned and operated company “Not Socks” is leading the RBR, closely followed by global player “Gifts”. Gift provider “RedBalloon” on third position with quite a big gap to the second position.

In general, search results are broadly dispersed among a wide range of competitors. In this competitive market, a few online gift providers have recognized the urgency of ranking well in organic search, nevertheless there are still many companies which are not at all present within organic search.

We discovered that gift-related search terms show seasonal peaks in December and at the beginning of the year. Therefore, optimising search strategies according to consumers seasonal search behaviour (and special occasions) is a key requirement to sell more.

In our survey we revealed that nearly 3 out of 4 Kiwis have ordered a gift online already and that gifts would be ordered for birthday’s most frequently. Moreover we discovered that the quality of the gift and money back guarantees played an important factor for most respondents when ordering online.

A digital strategy that integrates both organic and paid search should be a key customer acquisition and revenue driver for gift providers.

FIRST uses its bespoke metric called RBR (Ranking Based Reach) to estimate how well each company is ranking in search engines. RBR provides a simple way to compare a website’s search engine rankings with its competitors. RBR is an estimate of the percentage of available search traffic a website will receive for a set of phrases – this gives the sites share of search or reach. It is weighted based on the popularity of each search phrase and the relative click through rate (CTR) of each ranking position.

We all have very busy lives so I’m going to make this post nice and short, with screenshots that hopefully will make these universal analytics event set-ups pretty straight forward. But please let me know if you have any questions on any of these event settings

1- PDF Downloads

OK, let’s start with a very simple event: click on a .pdf document.

Tag: Universal Analytics, Event Track Type

The .pdf link is used as the event label with the {{element url}} macro, which is created by default in GTM.

Firing rule:

Tip: you can change the extension in the {{element url}} macro to whatever you need such as use {{element url}} contains .doc, as long as it’s a link.

2- Clicks on Email Addresses

We will use the {{element url}} macro again, but this time we’ll search for “mailto” in the link.

Tag: Universal Analytics, Event Track Type

Firing rule:

Tip: Change this to ‘tel:’ to track clicks on phone numbers – obviously you must use the tel: URL scheme to make this work, like this:

<a href= “tel:+6499201740″> Call us</a>

3- Outbound Links

I like to distinguish outbound link to Social networks from the other outbound links. To do that instead of using 2 event tags with 2 different Event Categories (Social pages / Other outbounds), I use a lookup table macro like this:

Then I use this macro as the event category in the event tag.

Tag: Universal Analytics, Event Track Type

Firing rule:

4- Form Submission

To track form submission as an event, you can use the Form Submit Listener tag. This tag is one of the Auto-Event Listener tags (Click Listener, Link Click Listener, History listener, etc.). You need to create them first if you want to use them in firing rules for other tags. However this is no longer needed in version 2 of Google Tag Manager. See here for more information on Event Listener and the upcoming changes to GTM.

For the folks using the old interface, here is the Form Submit tag you need to create:

You want this tag to fire only if the form submission is successful (Check Validation box) and on all pages (or at least on pages where you have a form).

5- YouTube Videos

I’m not going to repeat his great post here but basically his solution consists in creating:
1. a “YouTube Listener” Custom HTML tag
2. a ”YouTube is present” Custom JavaScript macro
3. 2 Data Layer Variable macros for the UA event action and category
4. And of course the UA Event YouTube tag

Conclusion

Here you go: 5 event tracking tags, which will hopefully give you more insights on your user behaviour. Google Tag Manager is a very powerful and flexible tool, which can give you access to a whole set of analytics insights while minimising the development work.
What do you think? Any other ideas of user interactions you’d like to track? Please get in contact!

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There is no reason why any website shouldn’t have a web analytics tool installed – especially since a tool like Google Analytics is available free of charge. The data that it can provide is plentiful – almost exhaustive – and can give you amazing information such as visits, bounce rates and other metrics which can […]

It’s that time of year again… when the digital community are making predictions on the technologies and tactics that will be HOT next year. While these predictions may or may not be realised, here are breakthroughs I believe New Zealand businesses should be making right now (and in 2015) to remain competitive, no matter what. Digital […]

For the full report (PDF) please use our download form Which toy stores are maximising their market share online? Find out which stores are taking the lead in the toy industry in organic search and how they’re doing it. FIRST has investigated the organic search engine rankings for NZ consumer searches focused on buying toys online in […]